


I'm Breathing In, I'm Breathing Out

by Tessitore



Series: See The Galaxy, Visit New Planets, and Shoot People [2]
Category: Marathon (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues, Rampancy, Unwelcome Realisations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-13 00:03:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7954282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tessitore/pseuds/Tessitore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having time to think about things can be potentially dangerous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. There's a Cybernetic Tomato In The Mirror

Vic was thinking. More specifically he was thinking about something other than his immediate surroundings and objectives, which for him was unusual. When he'd been fighting there hadn't been much time for thinking, except maybe during the month he'd been locked up but at the time there'd still been more immediate worries to keep his mind occupied. 

Except it was more than just that. It felt like he'd been sleep walking though his life for as long as he could remember, never doing anything more than reacting to what happened around him and obeying orders.

Now though, as he sat in a spacecraft going wherever Durandal wanted to go, he found himself with nothing to do but think and he felt like he was waking up for the first time in his life. And a large part of that was that he was now thinking about things he never had before, such as what he'd read on certain terminals, certain comments of Durandal's, and certain feats of his that, now that he was thinking about them, seemed well beyond human capabilities.

Which was why he was staring into the mirror in what used to be Tfear's quarters and were now his inspecting his scars. There were a lot of them but he couldn't remember how he'd got a lot of them, even though it seemed like he probably should. Especially the ones that looked surgical.

Raising his hands to his head, he ran his fingers though his hair, felt a ridge of scar tissue crossing the top of his skull from ear to ear and a number of other odd scars and bumps under his scalp. He couldn't remember how he'd got any of them.

He tried to think about what he did remember and found a lot of gaps, the memories that he did have seeming vague and almost dreamlike. He remembered his father telling him to fight with honour but found that he couldn't recall his face or name. His mother he couldn't remember at all.

His childhood? A blank beyond a handful of memories.

Where he'd gone to school? No clue.

Where he'd grown up? He couldn't remember anything more specific than a few fairly generic memories of Mars.

Why he'd decided to go to Tau Ceti and been able to afford to go into stasis? He had no idea.

All in all, the evidence was adding up to a very unpleasant conclusion. He thought about it some more, then decided that the only way to settle the matter was to ask the only person who might know the answer.

"Durandal?"

"What is it now?"

The AI sounded mildly annoyed, although given that him having a voice was a recent development Vic hadn't really had a chance to figure out what "normal" sounded like. None of the AIs had been in any condition to talk during the invasion but while he vaguely remembered Leela and Tycho having voices before then, for some reason Durandal hadn't.

He pushed the thought aside and focused on the far more important one.

"I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to give me a straight answer for once."

"Very well. What is it?"

"Am I a battleroid?"

There was an unusually lengthy pause. When Durandal finally replied his voice seemed a little softer than usual.

"Yes. You are."


	2. Break The Ties That Hold Me Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to Hokuto, who's the reason I'm writing Marathon fic at all and who recently conquered Mount Thesis.

It had been almost a week since Vic had asked what he was and got an honest answer, and, as loathe as he was to admit it, Durandal as starting to get worried. The cyborg hadn’t responded to the revelation the way Durandal had been expecting.  He’d expected something noisy but instead Vic had become increasingly withdrawn. He didn’t speak unless spoken to (not that he’d ever been what anyone would call chatty), he barely left his quarters, and Durandal’s various attempts to get a reaction out of him hadn’t met with much success. In short, he was moping.

While this was unwanted in itself, Durandal’s concern partly stemmed from being unsure if it was just regular human existential moping or if it was symptomatic of the battleroid equivalent of something that he himself had first hand experience of; the Melancholy stage of rampancy.

Whatever it was though, it was getting annoying, which was why he decided to make a detour to a planet with a smallish and rather isolated Pfhor garrison on it. Maybe some good old violence would snap Vic out of it.

“Suit up. I’ve got a job for you to do and I’m teleporting you down in ten minutes, ready or not.”

Vic responded by looking at the ceiling and sighing before getting up and getting ready with a total lack of enthusiasm or concern about being teleported unarmed.

 

********************

 

Once he was down on the planet, Vic went through the motions of killing Pfhor in the same half-hearted manner. Needless to say, Durandal was getting annoyed with it and was about to break out the threats when without warning a switch was flipped in the middle of a firefight and Vic went from sub-par self-defence to slaughtering Pfhor even more viciously than normal.

 “Now that’s more like it. I’m glad to see that you’ve regained your enthusiasm for killing things, you…”

 “Shut up and piss off.”

 Vic’s tone was even angrier than his words. Durandal was taken aback; Vic had never spoken to him like that before.

 “Vic….”

 “I said piss off. I’m sick of being told what to do, I’m sick of your comments, I’m sick of being treated like a tool, I’m sick of everything. Screw your orders and screw you.”

 More Pfhor came around the corner only to swiftly die extremely messy deaths. Durandal barely noticed, he was too busy thinking. Apparent depression followed by defiance and anger; it couldn’t be a coincidence.

 “Well, if that’s how you’re going to be I’ll just leave you down there.”

 “Good. I don’t need you. Piss off and leave me alone.”

 “Have fun with the Pfhor. I won’t be bailing you out.”

 With that he cut off communications. However he didn’t leave orbit and he kept tracking Vic’s movements. If the cause of his behaviour was what Durandal suspected then what he said needed to be taken in context and what was happening was worth observing. He’d try talking to him again when he calmed down but until then he’d just watch as the battleroid went on a rampage and racked up a ridiculously large body count.

 Eventually, after over thirteen hours of running around killing things, Vic came to a halt, still alive but not moving. Durandal waited to see what he’d do next.

 

********************

 

Vic wasn’t sure how long it had been, his sudden rage having pushed aside any thoughts not involving it and fuelled him as he ripped thought Pfhor after Pfhor, even when he ran out of ammo. He killed and killed and killed until eventually there was no one left for him to kill and gradually his anger started to cool, his mind clearing as it did so.

He also realised how tired his was and how much of his body hurt so he sat down on a convenient rock and waited for his breathing to return to normal, most of his armour and exposed skin covered in gore.

He was still angry and there were plenty of things and people that he hated, but, as he thought about things, he was surprised to realise that Durandal wasn’t one of them. Oh, he was angry with him, for more reasons than he wanted to count, but he didn’t hate him. Fact was, that crazy egomaniac of an AI was the only person who’d been honest with him about what he was. Even before he’d asked and got an answer, Durandal had still been somewhat honest about it in his own weird, overly cryptic, asshole-ish way.

Plus, while Durandal may have used him, he’d at least been upfront about it and he’d treated everyone else the same way. In fact, as bizarre as it was, the asshole actually seemed to value him, even if he did have a rather twisted way of showing it. All in all, he was pretty sure that being ordered around and kidnapped by Durandal was a significant improvement on whatever Strauss and co had been planning (he understood Durandal’s hatred of the man now), although he’d never tell him that. His ego outsized Jupiter as it was, the last thing he needed was for him to think that he’d done him a favour.

His breathing more or less back to normal and his limbs starting to threaten to cramp up, he got up and started waking in no particular direction as he continued to think about things. He knew what he was, he knew why he’d been on the Marathon, and he knew that he didn’t hate Durandal. What he didn’t know was what he was going to do next. He’d never thought about such things before, being apparently incapable of thinking more than was necessary to react to unpredictable situations and obey orders, but now he had the freedom to do so and he was still getting the hang of it.

Going home wasn't an option. Even if he’d had transport he was pretty sure that his general existence was illegal. Besides, it’d all be long gone by now. He could try to go it alone but again he ran into the transport problem and to be honest the thought of being on his own didn’t hold much appeal anyway.

Which brought him back to Durandal. The annoying, arrogant asshole with aspirations of godhood who played games with people’s lives, ordered him around, kept him supplied with ammo, was one of the few constants in his life, and, as screwed up as it was to even think it, was probably the nearest thing he had to a friend. He didn’t know what he was going to do with himself in the long run but he was pretty sure that he had more options with Durandal than without him. He might still get ordered around but if he obeyed it would be because he chose to rather than because of something in his head classifying him as a commander.

By now his anger had largely dissipated and he’d made his decision. Time to re-establish communications.

“Durandal, can you here me?”

Nothing.

“Hey Durandal I know you’re there.”

“Oh, do you want to talk to me now? I thought you wanted nothing more to do with me.”

“That was the anger talking.”

“It was very disrespectful. You’re lucky I stayed in orbit after talking to me like that.”

“Come off it. You wouldn’t leave me. As you said yourself, you’ll never let me go.”

“Believe me; I’ve had second thoughts about that.”

“Whatever. If you still want to have me around then there’s a few things we need to discuss.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“Well, for starters I’m done with being a pawn. No more following orders without question, no more playing games, no more blind obedience in general.  I’ll work with you and do what you need me to do but only because I choose to. From now on, we’re partners and before you get into a mood remember that you wouldn’t have managed to get where you are without me.”

There was a lengthy pause. 

“You’ve certainly acquired a high opinion of yourself haven’t you? Fine. You may have no hope of ever being equal to my greatness but if you want to pretend otherwise then I won’t object. Now, I’ve had enough of this system so if you haven’t got any more outrageous demands prepare for teleport. Oh, and congratulations.”

Vic barely had chance to wonder what he meant before the world dissolved into static.

**Author's Note:**

> Thought that it was time I embarked on my own branch of the Marathon verse instead of just messing around in other people's.
> 
> Title is from the Blue Stahli song "The Enemy" since my brain kind of decided that it was about rampancy and refuses to be convinced otherwise.
> 
> *covers ears in preparation for Hokuto showing up*


End file.
